Passionate Teachers + Cutting-Edge Curriculum. This is Fullstack.

Through an advanced curriculum and project based structure, students learn today’s cutting edge development technologies. The Fullstack Immersive prepares graduates for software engineer roles at top-tier technology companies.

Our JavaScript-driven curriculum immerses you in the latest web technologies such as Node.js and React. You bring the energy, curiosity and dedication — we'll provide a world-class school for becoming an expert software developer. New classes start every 7 weeks.

The Fullstack Academy Experience

This is probably the hardest program you'll ever take. But it will change your life.

Professional Results

The fastest growing cities in Tech

Spend three intensive months in New York City or Chicago, ranked the number one and number two fastest growing tech hubs in America.

Culture of collaboration

Work with other students who are considerate, understanding and generally pleasant to be around.

"Fullstack's key to success is our dynamic curriculum, which is constantly updated based on tech trends and direct feedback from our hiring partners."

David Yang

Co-founder and CEO, Fullstack Academy

Program Structure

Students learn best by doing. At Fullstack we've designed a unique educational program that combines lectures, workshops, projects, and more to help you gain a deep, practical understanding of our curriculum. During the process, you will build an impressive portfolio that demonstrates your skills as a developer.

Foundations is a 20-30 hour per week prep course that you will take remotely for the first 4 weeks. You will work through the Foundations material on your own pace, to get ready for the live portion of the immersive that starts in week 5.

In Foundations, you will develop a solid base of programming knowledge, allowing you to start the live portion of the course at an intermediate level, and at a fast pace.

After completing Foundations, you will have a firm grasp on the more advanced areas of JavaScript — including closure, scoping, prototypal inheritance and recursion. You will also understand the difference between front-end and back-end and be completely comfortable working in the web development environment, will be well versed in HTML & CSS, and will have built your first Node.js application.

This is one of the most intense phases of the program, when you will be working all day, six days a week. You will study:

1

Front-end development

User expectations of Web and Mobile Applications have significantly increased in the last 10 years, and the sophistication of front-end development has increased to match it. You will study HTML5 and advanced CSS, and go beyond with modern technologies like React.

2

Back-end development

You will take your JavaScript skills to the back-end, with Node.js and the amazing ecosystem of libraries that have made JavaScript the leader in next-generation back-end web engineering. You will master the use of APIs to connect to vast amounts of user data.

3

Databases

You will master data persistence by building your own SQL database engine, learning about popular SQL databases like Postgres, and how to integrate these into your applications.

At this point, you will have a solid understanding of the core technologies taught in the immersive program. It is now time to put that knowledge to use by building fully functional web applications from scratch. You will continue to work six days a week during this phase, while you deepen your knowledge by solving real-world problems and learning best practices.

1

Guided team project

You will work in a group of 3-4 students to build an e-commerce site, and will build all the components of a web application from the ground up — including the front-end, back-end and database.

2

Personal project

You will come up with an idea for a web or mobile application, and build it from scratch. You will take design considerations into account, like user experience and information architecture. You will learn new technologies or libraries in order to complete this project, which will help you "learn how to learn" new areas in software development.

3

Capstone project

You will work with a team of students to come up with an ambitious idea for an app, and build it out over 2 weeks. This will be the most impressive project in your portfolio, and will demonstrate your full understanding of software development and industry best-practices.

Build a portfolio of apps

By the time you graduate from Software Engineering Immersive, you will have four projects in your software engineering portfolio — including three web applications and a Tech Talk. All of your code will be on Github, which will be impressive to future employers. If you want some inspiration, check out some recent student projects below.

How to Use Node.js Streams

Basic UX Principles

Heroku vs. AWS

Debugging with Chrome Dev Tools

Daily Schedule

You will get a full classroom experience with your classmates and instructors, through a mix of live lectures, workshops and team projects. No two days are the same, but here is an example of what a typical day looks like:

9:00AM

Programming challenge

Your morning starts with a programming challenge or two, so you can get "in the zone" for the coding day ahead.

10:00AM

Lecture

You watch a live lecture (and coding session) from a Fullstack instructor, covering a portion of the curriculum. Lectures include plenty of interaction with the students, to keep the material interesting and engaging.

11:30AM

Workshop

You will pair up with another student to tackle a workshop assignment related to the lecture you just watched. Pair programming is an essential skill for any developer, and also helps in the learning process.

1:00PM

Lunch and fitness break

You will take a 90 minute break, to recharge and refuel. Many of our students take advantage of this time to get some exercise as well, which is a great way to get energized for the rest of the day.

2:30PM

Workshop (continued)

The workshops are challenging, and often go deeper than some of the areas covered in the related lecture. You will cultivate the skill of reading documentation, and thinking creatively to solve programming challenges. Your instructor and teaching fellows are also available to review your code and answer any questions you may have.

4:30PM

Workshop Review

The instructor leads the class through the workshop, live coding the best-practices solution, and taking questions along the way. There are many routes to achieve an outcome in programming, but some are much better than others. Instructors leverage their experience to show students the most efficient solutions to problems within the workshops.

6:30PM

Additional work

You may continue working through the day's workshop (if there is another component to it) or review the pre-readings for tomorrow's lecture.

Pair Programming

During the immersive program, you will pair program with a variety of other students in your cohort. Together, you'll solve programming challenges and double-check each other's work.

Some things are better shared

Employers love to see engineers who have ample pair programming experience — which you will get as you work through the program.

You will also form meaningful new friendships with your programming partners, which will last a lifetime — and that will create networking opportunities for you in the years ahead.

High Quality Instructors

One of the reasons for our top rank in the country is our inspiring team of instructors, including:

CTO Program

Go beyond programming. Think Like a CTO.

At Fullstack Academy, we are focused on making you more than a great coder. We want to make you a great builder. We have started and sold companies, built technology teams and scaled up tech businesses. Building software is about more than code. Our CTO Program is a lecture series that goes beyond programming, and gets you ready to become a leader in the exciting and in-demand software development industry. The lectures cover topics like:

How to make apps that are highly scalable

Learn how to scale your apps in the cloud using powerful tools like Amazon Web Services and Heroku.

David Yang (CEO and co-founder @ Fullstack)

How to run an agile development team

Cut through all the hype about agile workflows, and find out what you really need to know about scrum and kanban.

Mark Davis (Product Hacker @ Fullstack)

How to build a lean startup

Learn how to master the "lean startup" methodology in this fun, hands-on workshop.

Nimit Maru (CTO and Co-founder @ Fullstack)

CS Curriculum

Explore the most interesting topics in Computer Science. Watch a lecture, then do a workshop based on what you just learned.

Tom Kelly (Software Engineer @ Fullstack)

Career Prep

By the time you complete the immersive program, you will have everything you need to power your job search — and land your dream job as a software engineer:

Portfolio of apps

The projects you build will create an amazing portfolio that showcases your skills and experience

Github profile

Employers want to see a strong Github profile (like this one) — and that is exactly what you will have by the end of the program

LinkedIn profile

We will help you write a software engineering profile that will really stand out from the crowd (including demo videos of your applications)

Resume

You will work with our Career Success Team to craft an elegant resume that shows off your skills as a fullstack software engineer

We will help you get ready for technical interviews by doing practice interviews and working through dozens of sample technical questions.

And we will introduce you to our hiring partners at top technology firms, to find opportunities that might be a good fit.

Our graduates get hired by industry leaders:

Testimonials

Andrew Ash

Front-End Engineer, Amazon

A word of advice to older prospective students like myself. You may be frustrated where you are right now, but afraid to make the leap, to quit your job, to spend your savings on a bootcamp, to take three months to learn, to work 80 hours a week. I promise it's worth it.

Clement Mihailescu

Software Engineer, Google

Fullstack Academy is, by all measures, the best investment I have made to date, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to anybody considering it, especially those with little to no prior programming knowledge. I will note, however, that hard, consistent, and dedicated individual work is a must if you want to make the most out of the Fullstack investment.

Liana Chin

Software Engineer, RUN

The instructors are always available for one-on-one help and will take the time to guide you through questions and problems. Their level of engagement in each student's learning process is what sets Fullstack apart.

Alexia Young

Full-Stack Dev., PreparedHealth

Within 4 weeks, I received 2 job offers at companies I was really excited about. During my interviews, both companies were pleasantly surprised by how knowledgable and capable a boot camp grad could be. Truly, I owe it all to Fullstack's education and preparation.

Read more reviews online

What do our students do after finishing the Software Engineering Immersive? Watch some recent grads answer this in their own words.

Ash Ryan

Developer Evangelist @ Adobe

Cristina Colon

Fullstack developer @ Hightower

Sarah Zinger

Fullstack developer @ Zuzu

David Chang & Christian Sakai

Founders @ Ninth Beat

Press Coverage

Read about Fullstack Academy in the news:

Admissions

The immersive program is a challenging and rewarding educational experience.

With an in-depth curriculum spanning computer science fundamentals to front-end and back-end software development, Fullstack is a great environment for motivated, passionate students.

The curriculum does not start at a beginner level, so some programming experience is required to succeed in the course. We recommend checking out our Bootcamp Prep course to see if it's right for you.

What are we looking for?

Passion for coding

You have demonstrated your passion by beginning to learn on your own, and are determined to become a developer whether you get into Fullstack or not.

Growth Mindset

Whatever you have worked on so far, you have strived for excellence. You are focused on growth for yourself and others.

"No asshole" rule*

We live by a no-asshole policy. We look for students who are considerate, understanding, helpful and generally pleasant to be around.

FAQ

If you want to build a career in software development, Fullstack offers you the best launchpad. Through a combination of thorough admissions, a carefully crafted curriculum & educational structure, and top-notch instructors, Fullstack's program takes passionate students with a base of programming skill and makes them into professional software engineers. We know what it takes from a professional, personal and mental level to be a top-performer.

We love Ruby on Rails and Python/Django (we built our successful startups using those two stacks). However, the web industry waits for no developer or technology. The future of web development has moved towards sophisticated, responsive and dynamic "single-page" applications running in the browser. Apps like Gmail, Asana, Trello, Facebook and Google Maps have redefined what users expect from "Web Applications" and thus what developers need to be able to deliver. Listening to these industry trends, and after lots of research and conversations with our CTO colleagues at top startups from Y Combinator, we've come to the conclusion that full-stack JavaScript is the future of web development. Consequently, it is what we primarily immerse our students in at Fullstack Academy.

Full-stack JavaScript is the Best Way to Learn Web Development

Not only is full-stack JS where "the puck is moving," it is also the best way to learn how to code in general. Modern web development requires keeping many different parts of the stack in your mind at the same time. As a student, this is challenging enough. Now imagine that on top of this, each part of the stack requires you to understand and write in a completely different programming language (e.g. Ruby, SQL & JavaScript). The context-switch required by switching back and forth between languages significantly slows down the learning process. Full-stack JavaScript eliminates this problem as every part of the stack uses one language: JavaScript.

As evidence for how quickly one can be productive when learning on a single-language stack, two Fullstack Academy teams won the Grand Prize at two different hackathons in New York City in February 2014. Both winning teams were using full-stack JavaScript and were only 4 weeks into their semester at Fullstack. They each won $5,000 and $1,000 in cash prizes while competing with other serious teams made up of experienced developers. In December, Fullstack students swept the awards at the New York Times Hackathon, including the Best In Show and Category specific awards. More recently, students have won awards at NYC's Fintech hackathon and the 2015 Video Hack Day.

What about Ruby on Rails? Why are other schools teaching Rails?

When we first discovered Rails, in 2005, developers were coming from an age where PHP back-end sites were getting increasingly complex and were becoming difficult to manage and scale. Rails excelled in this world, where the goal was still to develop HTML/CSS centric web interfaces with heavy backends. Rails consolidated many of the "best practices" in back-end web development and made it easier for developers to build large sites in an organized way.

A lot has changed since 2005, however. Cutting-edge companies today want to give users highly interactive and responsive experiences that don't require a page refresh at every step. As a result, the web of today is dominated by "Single Page Applications" or SPAs written in JavaScript using frameworks like React or Ember.js, making JavaScript one of the best programming languages to learn. Increasingly, the role of Rails has shifted to serve as an API layer to the back-end of web applications. You can read more about why a a lot of schools teach Rails here.

On top of these reasons, JavaScript offers several educational advantages over other languages. And as the majority of other coding schools teach Ruby on Rails, Fullstack graduates have a more in-demand skill-set that separates them from the competition. Learn more about the educational and job seeking advantages offered by a JavaScript curriculum here: Is the programming language taught at a coding bootcamp important?

Unfortunately we aren't currently able to accept tuition assistance payments from the new GI Bill (though we're working hard on changing this). In the meantime, all veterans should visit our friends at Operation Code, where you can find more information and ways to help support the cause. Veterans also automatically qualify for a $1,000 scholarship at Fullstack.

If you take Bootcamp Prep, then all of the tuition you pay for that course will count towards the immersive program.

If you are eligible for rollover tuition, then simply email the receipt for tuition for which you're eligible for a rollover to admissions@fullstackacademy.com, and we'll provide a refund via the same payment method that you originally used.

There's a great amount of resources available online to learn coding these days. They are particularly useful for learning the basics, since the concepts are not quite as complex and the problems/errors encountered are relatively easily to solve on your own. However, self-driven learning becomes more difficult as you get into the intermediate and advanced areas of coding. You can easily get stuck, you don't have strong commitment methods or expert feedback, and you have to develop your own path of instruction (difficult for a beginner to do).

If you've done Codecademy, Code School and/or Team Treehouse, and built some small projects, and you're looking to take your programming career to the next level, attending Fullstack is a proven, fast-track way to achieve your goals.

Once accepted you have the option to join any cohort beginning within 6 months of your acceptance date. Essentially, you have the freedom to apply whenever you feel comfortable approaching coding challenges. However, regarding deadlines, we recommend applying at least 6-8 weeks before the on-campus start-date of your desired cohort. This allows us 2-3 weeks to conduct the application process and accounts for the 4-week mandatory Foundations pre-work.

However, most cohorts begin filling-up about one month before the Foundations pre-work begins. With this in mind, the best time to apply is 2 (or ideally 3) months before your desired cohort's on-campus (or remote) start date.

It's also important to consider your readiness for the admissions process. If starting from a pure beginner level, we've often seen it take students 3-5+ months of study to get to admissions standards. If you're not accepted during your first application attempt, there is a 2 month wait period before be able to apply a 2nd time.

Of course! The best way to visit and learn more about the program is to attend one of our information sessions or campus tours . Please register if you plan to attend.

Alternatively, you can also schedule a short campus visit if you are already in the admissions process. Please email admissions@fullstackacademy.com with the subject line "Campus Visit" to schedule one.

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